


Red Ink

by The_Wonderful_Jinx



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: F/M, Gen, One Shot, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 12:16:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5707744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wonderful_Jinx/pseuds/The_Wonderful_Jinx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Strand's graduate student gets their rough drafts back, but instead of corrections and comments, they find a singular name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Ink

**Author's Note:**

> An updated version of a [a post and a comment fic](http://the-wonderful-jinx.tumblr.com/post/134766673894/buckybabs-the-wonderful-jinx-buckybabs) I wrote a couple months back.

The graduate students in Dr. Richard Strand’s morning class were very grateful that he had such neat handwriting. To some, it reminded them of old-fashioned recipe cards their grandmothers would write. Some argued that it would be the handwriting found in old Victorian letter between sweethearts. All the opinions and all the comparisons boiled down to this one singular fact; compared to the chicken scratches and toddler marks they all had to deal with over the years, Strand’s writing -even when delivering pin point criticisms and nitpicking corrections that never failed to annoy them- was like a gift from God. 

Of course, these glowing remarks came to a crashing halt one cold, November day. The class gathered outside the room, huddling closely for warmth in the old building as the rain dripped down the glass windows before them. They held their papers in sheet-white, strained hands, with snarls on their faces more fit on hunting dogs than on young adults.

“Oh fuck me gently with a chainsaw!” Rose hissed as soon as Strand was out of ear shot from the small group of fifteen. She was the tallest (and arguably the sharpest) in the class, blonde hair in a pony-tail mussed up by her anger. It took all of her restraint not to rip the paper and toss it in the bin. She worked too damn hard her draft on to give up on it now, even with the newest unhelpful marks.

“You too?” Max, a tall, thin man with inky black hair, and bright blue eyes asked with a sneer, making the little scar he got from a bar fight on his mouth more pronounced.

“We got these doodles too!” the five PNWS interns shouted. They all looked as though they were five seconds away from chasing Strand down, rugby tackling him to the ground, and forcing him to explain why everyone in the class had a woman’s name written in fancy, red-inked script in the margin of their papers instead of helpful commentary or corrections which could have been applied to the final paper worth a quarter of their grade. 

Pissed off and feeling cheated of thousands of dollars and precious time, the idea of giving Strand hell was becoming more ideal as the seconds ticked by. Roughing up or confronting their dolt of a professor wouldn’t do them any favors, however, so instead they all flipped through their papers, exchanging and comparing the so called “notes” of their hopelessly -and helplessly- in love professor. Variations would occur - the bend of a letter, the curl of another, where the name was located on the pages- but one thing stayed the same, the name itself.

“Alex Reagan.” Rose growled, her teeth set on edge. She could feel the molars grinding, but her anger overrode the pain.

“Goddamn you Alex Reagan!” Max spat as he shoved his paper into his book bag with the grace expected of a pissed off student, cramming it in between two heavy books, not caring if it was destroyed in the process. Some followed suit. The interns did the same, albeit more slowly and angrily. The scowl on their faces did not dissipate.  For all they cared, Strand’s writing had already marked the papers as worthless, worthy only to the deepest parts of bags.  

“He really needs to get laid.” an intern grumbled.

“He needs a date, let alone sex.” another one agreed.

“With Alex, of course!” said another student.

Rose closed her eyes, sighed, folded her paper, and put the useless rough draft in her book bag carefully, still holding onto the hope that she could salvage it.

“Whatever or whoever he’s doing tonight; we still have papers that need to be written.”

No one could argue with that statement and they left the campus in moods worse than the weather around them. As each one desperately tried to fix their paper to the best of their abilities, one name curled around their waking thoughts as they typed, edited, and researched. Alex Reagan, the woman who somehow captured the heart of their professor. The woman who rendered their collected statue of a man into a love-sick fool, doodling love notes on the work he was supposed to be grading. 

Rose smiled as she took another break from her paper, getting up from her desk and moving to the balcony of her apartment. She looked back at the digital clock on her roommate’s end table (Said roommate was at the library). Midnight. She sighed and lit up a cigarette. She was trying to kick the habit, but desperate times called for desperate measures.  If the semester and Strand’s recent actions were any indicators, the paper would kill her before the tobacco, or so she reasoned as she watched the smoke disappear into the cold night air. 

As she paced, she wondered if Strand was thinking about Alex and what his deeper thoughts on her were. Not the shallow idle ones reflected by mindless doodles on her paper, however, but what the doodles didn’t reveal. The unsaid, hidden in text messages, late-night phone calls, and private conversations in quiet places where no one could find them. She smirked, put out her cigarette on the metal rail. and went back to her desk. And through the night as she wrote, one coffee cup and cigarette after another, she debated whether to shake Miss Reagan’s hand for being able to bring a man like Strand to his knees, or to demand reparations if she and the other students failed because of Strand’s inability to focus and do his job.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If there are any errors, OOC-nss please let me know!


End file.
